Anyone know where there's a good list of these. New standards coming down for hooking personal phones to office e-mail and 140-2 compliance is mandatory. The only phones I've found so far that comply are the Samsung Galaxy S2 and S3, as well as the Blackberry Z10.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

In short, the boffins that run my employer's e-mail system came out with a policy stating that any mobile device that connects to the Exchange server must meet FIPS 140-2 and have AES256 encryption on anything that came from the server. Given my day job it's perfectly clear that said boffins simply regurgitated some "industry standard" without taking any time to find out exactly what devices meet the specification they're pushing down. My Googles have found 3 handsets and 1 tablet that meet the spec. None of them run iOS and Apple does not have a single device cleared under 140-2 that I can find. I despise Apple (take it to another thread), but living in the hippie homeland of Vermont I must acknowledge that the vast majority of smartphone owners love their fruit.

My life was driven by my Outlook calendar, and it's now lost to my phone. Since my old Droid Global 2 cannot meet the FIPS 140-2 spec I've been forced to delete my work e-mail account from the phone. The boffins who implemented the policy obviously did so without even assessing exactly what phones would meet the new standards, unless of course Blackberry paid them off to force purchases of Z10s.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

bthylafh wrote:What do the higher-ups have? One assumes that being a vice-president doesn't exclude one from compliance.

You have to be an elected official or at the Commissioner level (appointed, confirmed by state Senate) to get a state-issue phone. Since my work life includes avoiding all such people as much as possible, I don't know.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

bthylafh wrote:This is definitely a workaround, but I think you could meet the letter of the law by accessing the Exchange server through a web browser that's configured to never cache anything.

Assuming Web Services are enabled, naturally.

The problem is that in the course of my field work I quite often find myself in places where I can't find Ethernet or open Wi-Fi, thus making me reliant on my phone. I'd prefer not to tether (easy on a rooted Droid with a grandfathered unlimited VZW data plan) as it's hard on the phone (you should see the temperature spike as data rates increase) and it adds to the space I need to occupy in places where my space allowance is often a chair and a 3'x3' table, although doing so would meet the letter of the standard. I'd much rather leave e-mail to the phone and put the laptop back in the bag so I have more space to get my work done, thus leaving me with the requirement to meet a standard that my centralized IT boffins cribbed from some "best practices" document without doing the slightest bit of research into whether or not the standard is achievable at not-ridiculous costs.

We've asked Central IT to give us a list of phones that meet their standards. They refused, saying that the analysis of compliance and the required personal signature on the policy stating that our phones comply with their policy is our problem.

I so adore check-box engineering.

[/heavy sarcasm]

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Captain Ned wrote: I'd prefer not to tether (easy on a rooted Droid with a grandfathered unlimited VZW data plan) as it's hard on the phone (you should see the temperature spike as data rates increase) and it adds to the space I need to occupy in places where my space allowance is often a chair and a 3'x3' table, although doing so would meet the letter of the standard.

Is this maybe a function of having an older phone? I've not really noticed this kind of problem with my GNex. Also, most of the better smart phones can do WiFi hotspotting these days, which at least gets one of the devices off the desk.

ludi wrote:Is this maybe a function of having an older phone? I've not really noticed this kind of problem with my GNex. Also, most of the better smart phones can do WiFi hotspotting these days, which at least gets one of the devices off the desk.

Likely so. The problem is that a phone upgrade means the end of my grandfathered unlimited data plan.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

ludi wrote:Is this maybe a function of having an older phone? I've not really noticed this kind of problem with my GNex. Also, most of the better smart phones can do WiFi hotspotting these days, which at least gets one of the devices off the desk.

Likely so. The problem is that a phone upgrade means the end of my grandfathered unlimited data plan.

ludi wrote:Is this maybe a function of having an older phone? I've not really noticed this kind of problem with my GNex. Also, most of the better smart phones can do WiFi hotspotting these days, which at least gets one of the devices off the desk.

Likely so. The problem is that a phone upgrade means the end of my grandfathered unlimited data plan.

Even if you buy an unlocked phone and swap SIMs?

VZW, no such thing?

Besides, whether you are tethering over wifi or usb, when the data is really flying through (say stream an HD youtube), phones will get hot as they are doing work.

The Model M is not for the faint of heart. You either like them or hate them.

This confused me too, but apparently LTE is a GSM technology? My dad's Samsung Stratosphere phone on Verizon has a SIM, as does my coworker's HTC <something>. I dunno the story, but a lot of newer Verizon phones do in fact have SIM cards.

auxy wrote:This confused me too, but apparently LTE is a GSM technology? My dad's Samsung Stratosphere phone on Verizon has a SIM, as does my coworker's HTC <something>. I dunno the story, but a lot of newer Verizon phones do in fact have SIM cards.

It's a card that looks like a SIM card but has another name I can't yet pull out of Wikipedia. LTE is a completely different transmission scheme than GSM or CDMA, although it can still fall back to either. Looks like the real goal with LTE is to get away from the circuit-switched calls of GSM/CDMA and create the cell equivalent of VOIP for everything.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.